Tom Izzo Continues His War Against Twitter: “Phones Are Like Drugs Now”

Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo believes that it is time that someone really starts to stand up for college athletes, at least when it comes to the ridiculous criticism that they often receive on Twitter and other social media platforms — he thinks that things have gone too far. Earlier this week, he came to the defense of Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart, who has received an abundance of backlash from fans after he took part in an altercation during a game this past weekend.

“It doesn’t matter what you tweet. It’s what you read. That’s what I keep telling my guys. We can control what they tweet, to a certain extent. They’re going to get frustrated sometimes and probably say something stupid. But it’s what they read. If somebody’s writing stuff about your daughter when she’s in high school, I’ll bet you look at it a little differently. I’ve had grown men (my players) in my office in tears because of what’s being written. That’s what brings the frustration level.”

Today, he elaborated on those thoughts with the media, and said that social media has changed the experience for the worse for student-athletes, and that “phones are like drugs now”:

Izzo thinks its hypocritical for coaches that tweet like crazy to complain about twitter negativity impacting players.#msu

Izzo makes a lot of valid points — athletes are receiving far too much criticism, and too many personal attacks, from social media. The problem is that student-athletes also enjoy the perks of platforms such as Twitter, so getting them to simply “give up” or walk away from it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen any time soon. While Izzo is right that somebody could be looking out for players and helping them deal with attention better, there’s simply no immediate solution for how to stop the influx of criticism from the other side. It will be interesting to see if any other big-name coaches start to hear more and more Twitter-related questions after Izzo’s comments.